In ‘A Strange Charm’, players adopt Roles in the story – Victory, Defeat, Love or Shadow – instead of specific characters. As the Scholar, an exiled Traveller, adopts different agendas he is controlled by different players. The humans and aliens he encounters are likewise run by different players as their role in the story changes.

Did you ever wonder why superheroes wear their underwear on the outside? Are they in too much of a hurry to dress properly? Or maybe they’re confident enough to be flashy? The truth is that their underwear is the secret of their power. A mysterious individual, known only as Keeton, has discovered how to make what he calls Magic Pants. They give the wearer powers beyond what normal people could achieve otherwise. He has also learned how to make masks, capes, and shoes, but every super hero needs Magic Pants. He gives these items to a select few willing to take up the fight against evil and those who try to tear down society. In this game, you are one of those lucky few.

In Tunnel Wars, you play as either a dwarf or a goblin on opposite sides of the decades long Copper War.

It isn’t a serious game by any measure of the word “serious,” and this was a first attempt at a 24 hour RPG, but it’s probably playable.

A game about goblins and dwarves running around in magic pants made of copper fighting a war
No, really, that’s actually what the game is about

Enjoy them during college, your coffee break, when you can’t sleep on the phone, while you’re on the bus, or just when there’s nothing on TV.

This is arguably a playable game, but it doesn’t look very good. There is much missing from this first draft: graphics, fit & finish, a fleshed-out sample adventure, and a Narrator’s section.

The world of Appliance Adventures is very similar to our own world, advanced fifteen years into the future. Science has made great strides in the field of simulated intelligence. True artificial intelligence beyond the level of simple animals has evaded researchers to this point, but futurists and pundits (ever a reliable source) think that it is right around the corner.

The game is a cyberpunk-styled RPG where the players take on the roles of the gnomes the descendents in culture if not genetics of those people who moved into the superstructure of the domes. This is a world that is entirely off the grid. They have to scavenge for everything from food to water and in some domes even for air.

Geodesic Gnomes is a full RPG – setting, character creation rules, physical, social and political conflict resolution mechanics, a unique equipment system, character sheet and even a multiple scene adventure to play through for your first game to get into the setting and game.

Since the day the world ended, maybe the multiverse hasn’t finished with you. Some of you claim to know, but who’s to say, really? Whatever the case, as the cold closed in, each of you reached out, from some resource you never knew you had, for any way to go on. Your world died, but you coursed elsewhere, scattered around a happy and unsuspecting new variant with different lives and different names. Over the years, you found each other, those who wanted to be found, and another thing: a purpose.

Players take the roles of refugees from a destroyed universe – not destroyed by accident: they’ve come to realise that the consumption of their world and countless others fueled the establishment of a far distant utopia, a place of endless spring and the best of good fortune. What the players choose to do in this green January, if they ever find it, is up to them.

You must escape the orphanage, your home with the other children for as long as you can remember before this doom finds you.

But what is this doom? What exactly is coming for you? Is it fire, darkness, a murderous Mr Keaton? It is up to you to decide, and the worse it is the more cookies you’ll get.

Dr. Reginald Keeton, the CEO of TeddyBears, Inc. took three popular things and combined them into a marketing frenzy unlike anything anyone had seen before. Reality TV, Blood Sport, the cute wasted husks of the Teddy Bears of his empty stores and created entertainment that took the world by storm.

Dr. Keeton was as astute and powerful if misguided student of the occult and used his talents in dark magics to invest the empty husks with lost souls he pulled from the depths of Hell. This act of desperation led to many of the bears to be home to some of the most vile and twisted souls ever seen by humanity. However, this worked to his advantage…for a time. The bears were bloodthirsty killers and performed exactly as he directed.

Children and their misguided parents lined up to watch their favorite stuffed animals slash and tear each other apart, ripping the enchanted fluff from their guts, all while the audience screamed in sheer joy. The show became a massive hit and things were great for many months and TeddyBears, Inc. saw huge profit margins and Keeton was hailed as a master businessman. He named his creations ScareBears.

Then the trouble began. The souls became restless and unhappy in their condition. Frankly, they were a little pissed they had been trapped in puny little furry bodies, can you really blame them? People began disappearing from the set of the TV show, the telltale sign of a little fluff left at the scene of the crimes was a dead giveaway as to who was at fault. Initially Keeton did all he could to cover the problem and continue his show. Quickly the bears out smarted him and began plotting.

Recently, a few bears failed to appear for their performance. Their cages were checked but found empty. The ScareBears have been released upon the world. Keeton nervously now watches his back.

Enter the world of

Teddy Bear Blood Sport!

I gave Dyson my best “up-yours” glare and blew a smoke ring where his face should’ve been. Dyson was a featureless ball who usually floated at about shoulder height (on me, anyway). He appeared to be made of glass, but God knows what my mentor had crafted him out of. Glass wasn’t bulletproof, and I’d seen Dyson
take a .38 slug at point blank and show not so much as a scratch. His color slowly shifted to match my mood, which meant that right now he was deep, non-reflective black. “Not likely,” I responded, “If guns and knives can’t kill me, I don’t think bad habits will.” I shifted in my seat in a vain attempt to restore some feeling to my nether parts. “How much longer is this gonna take, Dyson? I have other appointments to
keep.”

“Don’t get your knickers in a twist, boss,” Dyson said jauntily, “I scan that the mark will enter the building in 11.023 seconds.” I turned my gaze to the door just in time to see two figures fade out of the night shadows. I blinked the darkness out of my eyes to see them clearly. It was a girl and a boy, both Latino teens. She was a bit chunky but firm, cute if you like chubby girls, with a jiggle to her middle that suggested baby weight. He was tall and wiry with multiple piercings and the half-mohawk haircut that all the wannabe hardboys were wearing in these parts. No doubt about it, this was the mark and the expected companion. The boy jimmied the lock with the ease of long practice and pushed the girl through the door, then he slipped in behind her.

“About time,” I grumbled as I tossed my half-smoked cigarette into the Shadow. I opened the car door as the church door clicked shut, unfolded my six-foot-three height from the cramped confines of the Firebird and crossed the street in what I hoped was a confident swagger. Dyson bobbed along beside me in silence, all business now that it was go-time. I stopped at the door and eyed my familiar. Dyson gave an electronic sigh and willed the sounds inside to percolate through the wood and into my ears.

“I don’t know about this, Raphael,” the girl whined, “Isn’t there some other way?” I could hear her clothes rustle as she fidgeted and a squeaking sound that was probably one of her hands twisting a ring on the other. Various thumps and bumps told me that Raphael was moving things around. I needed more information than my ears alone could provide. I signaled Dyson to oblige, and he extended my other senses into the church. My projected vision revealed desolate absence. The pews and pulpit were long gone, probably broken up for firewood, and any curtains or hangings that had once adorned the walls had long since been
converted to blankets. Such is the way of the world after civilization collapses, yet the locals retained enough piety that the stained glass windows were unbroken. Jesus remained on the wall, staring forlornly at the empty space where the sanctuary used to be. I knew how he felt. The girl stood next to her boyfriend while he knelt on the floor surrounded by boxes. He was unloading ritual paraphernalia and carefully arranging it according to some formula. A ring of candles surrounded a thin sleeping mat that lay where a more suspicious girl would’ve thought a sacrificial altar might go. One box remained unopened as he worked. I didn’t see them carry any of this stuff inside, so Raphael must have stashed it here ahead of time. The
room stank of mildew, but over that I noticed an aroma of peaches from the girl’s hair. I couldn’t tell if it was homemade or pre-Burn, but it was distractingly pleasant. I grabbed my attention by the scruff of its neck and pointed it back to the business at hand.

In JiTP, each player will take on the role of one of ten versions of a man called Joe. These versions all come from different times and possibilities. One might be Joe when he was 12 years old, dealing with a school bully. Another might be a 20-something college student with a lecherous boyfriend.

Joe is a pretty obsessive person, so it’s unsurprising that all of his variants are as well. Each of them is obsessed with a particular decision that he has to make, but has avoided making thus far.

All of the Joes in the game have come into contact with a person they know only as Keeton. From one innocuous conversation, they have each gained the ability to meet other possible Joes and influence them and their decisions. Unsurprisingly, after gaining this ability, most of the Joes choose to wander through time and space visiting and watching other versions of themselves rather than dealing with the decision they were avoiding in the first place.

The Joes embodied by the players are different, though. They’ve all become stuck, fixated on one, specific variant that they’ve found in their travels. They’ve dubbed him “Joe Prime.”

Joe Prime is just like every other Joe: he’s obsessive and he’s avoiding an important decision. Unlike the player-characters, however, Joe Prime has not met Keeton.

Joe Prime’s decision has become incredibly important to the stuck Joes. They each want his dilemma to be resolved in a different way, for different reasons. Maybe his problem resonates with their own, or maybe he’s come to represent something about themselves that they hate. Regardless of why, they’ve each decided to marshal their influence amongst the variants and push Joe’s situation towards their chosen conclusion.

But the Joes are risking more than they know. Interacting with variant versions of themselves can begin to take a toll on their sense of self. In the end, they may have to decide which is more important: the safety of themselves and their variants, or the success of their self-imposed mission.

And what of Keeton? What does he want? Why did he give this peculiar power to Joe?

Only time will tell.

Hi. My name is Joe. I’m pretty normal. Nothing interesting about me, really. I’m [twenty / twelve / thirty-five]. I live here in the city. I’ve been here most of my life. What else can I say?

I guess the most interesting thing about me is what happened a few weeks ago. I ran into this [guy in class / kid at the playground / man on the bus] and we somehow struck up a conversation. I’m not quite sure how it happened.

I’ll admit I was distracted. You see, I’ve been a little obsessed lately. I was kind of avoiding this decision I had to make about [my boyfriend / this bully at school / my future career] and I’ll admit Keeton showed up at just the right time to pull me out of my head.

Oh did I mention that? He said that was his name.

Anyway, we talked for a long time. About decisions, ironically enough. About how they can affect you and everyone around you. About how we seem to come to these points in our lives – these moments of decision that can change everything for us. Those moments we go back to late at night, and wonder how things might have been different.

Keeton asked me a lot of questions about things I might have done differently in my life.

I haven’t seen him since. I went home with my head spinning.

The next morning, I knew something had changed. I felt different, though I’ve never been able to put it into words. The first time I traveled, though, I understood what Keeton had done. It was the day I met myself. One of myselves. Whatever the word would be.

I met a Joe that [had never gone to college / lost his mom when he was little / had joined the army], and while it was weird, we had a nice conversation about the other Joes that might be out there.

Since then, I’ve met a lot of me, as I’ve learned how to wander through time and possibility. But there’s one Joe in particular I’ve become…well, I guess I’ve become obsessed with him. I … well, I guess we call him Joe Prime.

See I’m not the only one who’s obsessed with this Joe. There’s this [geeky twelve-year-old kid / old-sad-man-me / gay version of me] that I’ve seen around, and he seems interested in Joe Prime, too. I’ve gone up and down Prime’s time-line and seen him lurking everywhere in the background.

And I’ve seen how the other Joes are obsessed, too. Obsessed with the decision that Joe Prime is facing. You see, I want him to [stand up for himself / get away from the mess he's in / admit the truth to himself] but I don’t think the others want that.

So we’re kind of at a stalemate. Every time I try doing something directly to Joe Prime, one of the others shows up and messes everything thing up.

But I’ve got a plan.

I’ve got some other Joes on my side. [Blue-collar Joe / That sad other kid Joe / Army Joe] and I have been talking and I think I’ve got some pull with him. He’s agreed to go out for me and do a couple things along Joe Prime’s time-line. Try and convince him that our way is the best. Then, once he’s made the right decision, I think I can finally go back and [tell off my cheating ass of a so-called boyfriend / tell my parents about what's really been going on at school / leave my job and find my true calling].

And then everything’ll be great. Right?

See. I told you. I’m pretty normal.

Hundedämmerung is something different in the world of role-playing games. Most games allow players to portray beings of greater than human power wielding forces that ordinary people barely understand. This game allows you to play… a dog. Not just any dog, but a dog that has been lifted to human levels of intelligence, albeit the lower end of the scale, and endowed with minor telepathic powers that serve as
speech. In this game you will fight for the survival of your pack or the safety of “your” humans. And always, in the background, there looms the specter of a cat that is many cats – the undead, the undying, the (probably) evil Ozymandias. In Hundedämmerung you have no spells, you wield no magical or high-tech weapons and your psionic abilities aren’t much good for combat. What you have are your wits backed by natural canine ability. Use them right and evil will be your chew toy. Mess up and Ozymandias will use you as a scratching post. Welcome to the doghouse, sucker.

2499: We return home.
The colonies of Mars, born in hope, grew up in pain, despair and hard decisions. Some thought that the nations of Earth had learned their lessons and put aside the bombs forever. As it turned out, “forever” meant just long enough for them to build the Busway and send our forefathers down it – their smartest and brightest, their pride, their best hope – before everything that the Two Thousand knew collapsed at their heels into genocidal fire.

We survived, some of us. We dug into this lye-bitter dust and took from it air to breathe and water to drink, for those who hadn’t choked on CO2 and gone to graves scraped in the red slag while we toiled. We broke down the ships that could have taken us home, to build tools, to make the tools, to build the cities that could lift us again into the heavens.

In 2499, Director Keeton’s calculations have convinced the Martian nations that we’re ready to turn again to
whatever is left of the Earth, as Earth once looked outwards to this worn-down old globe where we stand today. With a stretch, we can reach the Busway and load onto the old shuttlers a few suitcases’ worth of cameras, radars and clever processors to go in our stead.

We may not get much. The probes might get killed in high orbit by vampiric satellite-hunters, flying junk that
we have no way to detect or track, sleeting radiation in the overloaded Van Allen belts, or our own carelessness with orbital mechanics. It’s been almost four hundred years, after all, since people tried this sort of thing.

The landers might not live a minute in the acid rain clouds, the war-dusts and the automated missile defences in the atmosphere, or the absolute unknowns that rove the bombed-out ground.

We’ve learned, on Mars, the value of sacrifice. We’ll send them anyway, for whatever we can get in the descent and the first 24 hours. After that, every hour is a gift. We’ll just have to play it by ear.

Gamba Robo! It’s a celebration of those glorious old robot shows that let the imagination run wild. Blazing swords and projectile weapons that looked like animals flashed across the screen to the amazement of many a yound child. Sure, they were written for companies that wanted to sell toys, but they were AWESOME! This is your chance to project yourself into their world as a daring hero or to create your own “show” as the narrator and throw all kinds of havoc at the poor unsuspecting Do-Gooders.

The mechanic is very simplistic and both play and character-creation are left mostly to the whim of the Narrator. This is an extremely rules-lite game designed to capture the feeling of those fantastic classic super-robot shows.

Chain fists, drill arms and tomahawks made of lightning were a regular feature of the 1970’s giant robot shows. The robots had names like Daitarn, Voltes V and Mazinger Z. They had personality and charisma of their own. Those towering heroes were shunned by the next generations in favor of more “realistic” mecha that emphasized the vehicular nature of the machines. Blazing swords were replaced by machine guns and guided missiles. We were no longer watching super heroes. We were watching wars. As fabulous and sophisticated as the new mecha shows are, some of us will always long for the super robots of days gone by. Nothing thrills like a huge, laser-edged disk hurling from a giant arm to cut right through the
shoulder of some immense monstrosity because our hero screamed, “SPINNN… SAUCER!”

This is a mostly-finished alpha version of what will hopefully be a more in-depth system/setting.

Based on 2d6+mods resolution, fixed damage.

The year is 1844. Following their successful defense against Mexican forces, the Republic of Texas faced a new foe. Quick to take advantage of their weakened position, French forces moved in by sea, seeking to regain a foothold in North America. Their forces were more disciplined, more determined, and better equipped than the forces of the Mexican Army, and soon France was calling Texas a French Territory. The United States of America, while wary of their new neighbors, had no cause for war, and left the Republic to their own devices. No Texan was comfortable living under French Rule, however, and the native tribes were divided, some siding with the French and others preferring the devil they knew to this new invader.

Texans began to fight back. Not all at once, but slowly and surely, the movement began. Gunmen, drifters, and bandits from nearby territories heard of the profit to be made fighting off the French Occupancy.

In this swirl of native warriors, French soldiery, and Texan roughnecks, any enterprising man (or woman) can make their mark. Will you?

“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” – who watches these powerful unlicensed vigilantes and cleans up after their rampages?

You, of course, as an agent of the Headquarters for Enforcement & Registration of Observed Supernatural.

Of G-men and Supermen is a 24 hour game I wrote for the 1km11kt.net contest, on the topic “Power Squid”. It casts the players as government agents keeping tabs on the rising population of super-powered individuals in 1958 America.

As one of the contest judges, I can’t win, but as an activity done for fun – I think it came out well.

The game is based on a standard deck of 54 (including jokers) playing cards.

The G-man in the window sighed, adjusted his hat, and lit another cigarette. As the menthol feeling filled my lungs, I realized that it wasn’t a window, but a mirror. Damn. When did I get so old? It seems like just yesterday that I was a kid enjoying his comic books and now I’ve got gray temples and a conservative tie. When did this happen?

Oh yeah – when those comic books came to life.

A lot of people are willing to call them heroes, and that is not wholly wrong. “Comics” do pluck falling airliners out of the sky, and stop ice ray wielding whack jobs.

But we have taken to calling them “Squids”. Because they’ve got tentacles that reach into everything, making our life pretty complicated. After all, they’re vigilantes, who refuse to reveal their identities, and become involved in the law with no certification or training. Their authority issues from the fact they can break what seem to be basic laws of physics, much as the Reds rule by the barrel of a gun.

What does it mean to have faith in god when you see miracle workers every day?

If a so-called hero wanted to level an entire city, what could we do to stop them?

Well, our organization for one. We might not succeed, but out agents would try their hardest anyway. To do any less would be un-American.

Everyday we get our orders from Mr. Keeton. Everyday he seems ten years older. It can’t be easy to direct an agency like this when his twin brother is one of the people we watch extra closely.

I have to wonder who is the hero in this amazing tale. Is “Normal” Keeton ultimately the white knight charging down chaos and disorder? Or are these people to be taken at face value, and Keeton himself the villain?

It is also a game about bugpeople! In this fantasy roleplaying game, you take on the role of a human being in an odd fantasy society where everyone has traits derived from some insect or another. Characters have the power of hormonal and pheromonal supernatural abilities to help them achieve their goals & whatever their goals may be is up to the one writing the story!

This RPG was written through a thunderstorm, on the fleeting battery of a laptop during a blackout (in google documents that refused to save because the internet was out) and I like to think that makes it special. Enjoy!

Bug-People?
This game assumes that the character you’re playing is basically a human with some insect traits, rather than an actual insect or an “anthro” insect walking around on two legs.

This is done to simplify the game’s rules – while you can probably accept that a human with insect wings and clawed feet can stand on two legs, see like humans do, smell, taste and so forth, it is probably much more of a stretch to believe a bulky rhino beetle can do so, whimsical as that might be. It is also much easier for a Game Master to apply his common sense and logic in a game of humans with bug traits, than it is in a game of talking bugs. Rather than complicating its rules, the game assumes you’re playing bug-people. So you’re not really playing a butterfly – you’re playing a human being with butterfly wings and antennae.

These Bug-People (referred to from here on out as just Insects) wear clothes, have two eyes, stand on two legs, and have mouths, talk, and act like humans would, even living in a fantasy style society. How you visualize your character, however, is up to you, and the society your insects live in is up to your Game Master’s story. There is a section below that talks about such concerns, primarily to Game Masters.

Insect Society has many types of Insects and 4 Castes: Warrior, Servitor, Scout, Noble. All insects can be a member of any Caste, with some prerequisites. All Insects have two special powers, pheromones and hormones. These act as the magic of the game. Hormones are focused on helping or healing a creature, and Pheromones harm or influence a creature. Some creatures learn more of these powers, or are focused more on them, depending on their Caste.

Badass Presidents is a game of playing American Presidents who are sufficiently badass. The world has been destroyed, overrun by mutants, evil deities, and horrors from beyond the stars. As an American President, what can you do but dust off your knuckleduster and get ready to kick some ass.

Badass Presidents is a role-playing game, and additionally, one designed in 24 hours as a part of a contest. Therefore, the reader is cautioned in that when reading the content that you are about to behold, keep in mind that you got what you paid for. If you paid money for this document, you should find who sold it to you, and beat the crap out of them for making an idiot out of you.

Bring reality into your game, and perhaps game into your reality.

Players: 3 or more
System: Rough Consensus
Need: Pencils, drinking glass, and a large piece of white paper

Written as part of The 1KM1KT / Free RPG Blog 24 Hour RPG Competition.

The document is supposed to be printed as an A5 booklet, therefor the blank pages.

Welcome, oh Seeker of the Dead
This game is about relationships – dysfunctional relationships. We will each bring one problematic relationship from our lives into the game, and in game it will be transformed into a fictional relationship to a spirit.

We will perhaps be able to resolve the issues of the relationships by contacting the spirits at a séance. Hopefully reliving the past and speaking to the dead will help us resolve our issues with the once living. Time will tell.

Before we begin let me first summarize the game we’re about to play. Then I’ll go into more detail about how you do specific parts of the game, and finally we’ll have time for an example and some
advice.

For a thousand generations, the hundred tribes of the Hamster Republic lived in peace among themselves and with their neighbours. The Syrians lived alone as was their way, and the Dwarfs lived in small villages as was theirs, and popularly-elected Rulers supervised the happiness of all the tribes. All were content with their lives, living off the land.

Then came the Mekaton. They were autonomous machines from elsewhere, and the hamsters had never seen anything like them. They built massive installations and labyrinthine cities, and mined the earth for minerals to build more like them.

At first, the hamsters tried living peacefully alongside the Mekaton. There was plenty of room for everyone. Ruler Titus even adopted some Mekaton customs. But then, the land started to become poisoned and the waters polluted. The Mekaton were deaf to the hamsters’ complaints. The hamsters grew restless, but wherever their unrest boiled over to violence,
the force guns of the Mekaton made short work of their opponents.

And you don’t like the way the Directors look.

It’s time to find the Producer and get some answers.

It’s the ‘50s. Oddly, you can’t quite remember the year. You’re a pretty ordinary person, maybe just a tad better than the average joe, with a pretty exciting life. You’re a jungle explorer, a gangbuster, a private detective, a heroic scientist.

There’s just one problem: you swear you’ve seen this all in a movie.

You can’t quite put your finger on it, but reality just doesn’t seem to add up anymore. Maybe it’s the gaps in your memory; you don’t feel like you have a real past. Maybe it’s the way you suddenly “remember” someone you feel you’ve just
met. Maybe it’s the occasional moments of lost time. Or maybe it’s the way you can sometimes predict what’s about to happen, because it seems to be part of the “plot formula”.

There’s also more eerie evidence. The feeling you’re being watched. The way everything seems to be connected. The way the universe seems to conspire against you any time you try to “break the plot”. And those strangers in the shadows…

Whatever it is, you’re going to get to the bottom of it. And you know Keeton hasthe answers…

The Premise
Haven takes place in the star system of Tau, containing many fantastic places and inhabited by several sentient species, and surrounded by an impenetrable barrier field. Several lifetimes worth of adventure await in Tau, but the ultimate mystery is this: who cut out the system from the rest of the galaxy – and why?

This is a game about resource management, strategy, outwitting the GM, and telling a cool story to justify all the stuff you want to do with game mechanics.

OR

This is a game about adventurous types out looking to recover lost artifacts, mighty weapons of power, and ancient relics. The default setting of the game is a soft sci-fi post-apocalyptic world where high-tech items may still exist in ruined cities, forgotten bomb shelters, hidden compounds, or remote and inhospitable wilderness regions. You can also send people looking for treasure in the pulp age, or on distant worlds, or in a fantasy realm if you like. Most of the setting stuff is just window dressing that will affect how things are described but not how the game mechanics work.

The game is written for a group of 3-6 people, one to GM. Someday I will add rules for one-on one play. You will need pencils, paper, ten-sided dice (at least 3, maybe 3 per player), and some kind of chips or beads or markers in four distinct colors. (You could use several decks of playing cards, treating each suit as a color.)

Beltaine is a game about the Faeries and creatures of Celtic myth living in the modern world. It’s being put together quickly as a part of the 24 hour RPG project, and will hopefully serve as a springboard for a cyberpunk-and-Fae game I hope to write later.

The faerie courts are dangerous places, socially and physically, and it is easy to fall from favor. The safest thing to do when one does so is to go into exile on Earth. Some, like the Fomorians, live in permanent exile on Earth, either in hiding or disguised as humans. Fae on Earth often interbreed with humans, and their half-faerie children typically remain behind.

The edge of the century draws near, as does the life of the great Queen Victoria. In America, the Native tribes have been decimated, and the frontier declared closed. England is beginning to lose her Empire, though for the moment it is safe. In the cities, women shout for the right to vote, workers strike for a living wage, and anarchists gather in secret with Das Capital in one hand and a bomb in another.

In Europe, ethnic unrest and a complex web of alliances will soon burn the continent in a war many men think will be good. They say that Europe has gone soft and weak and needs a war to make it strong again.

And underneath the calm, stoic Victorian facade, madness coils and twists, waiting to erupt. Secret societies meet, calling on spirits of the dead and ancient gods. Curses lay upon families, waiting to drag them down into madness, or worse.

Central Resolution Mechanic inspired by “dukereg” on the “Opportunity Pool” thread at http://forum.rpg.net/archive/index.php/t-384462.html

Immortalis’ is a game set in the current day, but it is a world very different from our own. Colonies and space stations dot the Solar System and the first steps to other stars are about to be taken. You play an Immortal, either part of the public face of the Council of Immortals or hidden amongst the masses. Either way, you work to guide humanity and stop the insidious influence of the Dark Summoners. Dark Summoners are people who can summon entities from the Rift and use them to control mortals like puppets.

Immortals have been around since the dawn of man. In ancient times they were the heroes of myth. However, during Roman times a Council was formed and Immortals decided to let normal mortals define the shape of the world to come. Immortals retreated from sight.

The plan worked well for 2000 years. In secret Immortals worked to limit the damage done by the Dark Summoners. However, the numbers of Dark Summoners grew until the conflict engulfed the world in war in the late 19th century. Secrecy was no longer possible and after the victory of the Immortals and their mortal allies, the Council of Immortals decided to take on a guiding role in the world. It was a Golden Time of art and science and it took humanity into space.

The game uses a fairly simple set of rules and you’ll need up to 5d6 for each player and the GM.

INTRODUCTION
In case you had already guessed ‘Immortalis’ is the latin word for immortal and that is what the player characters are.

First of all you should probably be an experienced GM or player. I will not be explaining about what roleplaying is, define many common roleplaying terms or include a lot of the other things you find written at the start of many rpgs. Consequently, you should probably already know that stuff and have done it all before.

These rules may be copied or printed freely, so long as I’m given credit. However, they may not be sold or used for profit by anyone but me.

WHAT DO YOU NEED?
You’ll need up to 5d6 for the GM and each player. I’ve also included a character sheet at the end.

THE SETTING
This game is set in an alternate version of the current day. There are colonies on several moons and planets in the Solar System and fusion-powered ships ply the space lanes between. Some believe that the first step between the stars has been taken. We first ventured into space in the 1905, ten years after the Great War.

DIP-Styx

An introductory RPG for the 24 Hour RPG Project
Written by Timothy Dedeaux
Begun Sunday night, April 20, 2008 around 7:00 pm
Ended Monday, April 21, 2008 around ??
Premise/idea: one non-roleplayer who’d tried roleplaying and hadn’t fallen in love with it told me the hardest part was character creation. Cross-referencing this in my mind with what I’d read years ago on the old Rec.Games.frp.Advocacy group about Design at Start vs. Develop in Play styles, I decided to write an RPG to emphasize the DIP side of things, and perhaps help new roleplayers get over the “character creation” hurdle. Develop in Play is abbreviated “DIP,” and thus the “DIP” part of the name. The “Styx” part comes from the setting. For the record, this is designed for an at least somewhat experienced GM to use to introduce new players, not to be easy-access for a group of total newbies.

For thousands of years, Charon guarded the entrance to the underworld, protecting us from the things that go bump in the night. But now, he’s gone missing, and creatures are slowly breaking free, and it falls to ordinary people to stop them. Ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and strange spirits must be put to rest, and only you can do it: are you up to the task?.
The game begins with a group of relatively ordinary people (the player characters, perhaps with a few NPCs around for flavoring) finding themselves in a strange situation. They have to figure out what’s going on and how to stop the creature. Ultimately, the game is a game of investigative horror, though the horror can be run anywhere from G-rated, funny cartoon monsters to Unrated disturbing things. The characters may find themselves chasing ghosts through old, haunted mansions, seeking lost children in the dream world, chasing a vampire through the slums where he preys on prostitutes, Jack the Ripper style, or hunting (and being hunted by) a werewolf on a country estate.